Darwin's Theory of Evolution and its modern proponents have always maintained
that most of what living things do is done to promote their own genes. Living
things fight to survive, and they fight to pass on their genes by having multiple
offspring. The fact that polar bears and lions will kill babies of their
own species is seen as a way of promoting their own offspring. Bird singing
and coloration is seen as a way of producing more chicks and keeping rivals
away. Much of this scenario makes good sense and is supported by numerous
studies.

If you watch Animal Planet on television for any period of time, you will
see videos of dogs raising cats, cats raising birds, dogs raising pigs, and
many other combinations that seem at best unlikely. Recent studies of meerkats
have shown that one dominate female will give birth and lower-ranking females
will baby sit--even though genetically they are unrelated (Milner, R., "Altruistic
Meerkats," Natural History, Vol. 109, No. 8). Not only does such
activity promote the survival of a competing meerkat's offspring, but it
keeps the baby-sitter from mating and having offspring of her own.

The habit can be expensive. If the adoptee is added to an existing
litter, the adopter's own offspring may get less to eat. If adopting delays
the next brood, the adopter's lifetime reproductive success may be reduced.

All of this flies in the face of sociobiology and the notions of nature
as a cold and heartless master.

What may very well be the situation in nature is that much of the mechanical
view of how living things function is too shallow. Animals eating their own
kind are likely to be oddities produced by stress or extreme conditions and
not the normal result of animal behavior. Years ago, there were researchers
who reported that female praying mantises killed and ate their male partners
immediately after copulation. Later studies showed that this behavior happened
in captivity, but rarely, if ever, happened in the wild. Man's influence
on animal behavior produces some bizarre reactions on the part of the animals.

The biggest failure of the Darwinian theory is to explain adoption and
its related behaviors in humans. There are couples who have no desire to
have children. Richard Dawkins has noted though that from an evolutionary
standpoint, adoption is "a double whammy. Not only do you reduce, or at least
fail to increase, your own reproductive success, but you improve someone else's.
Since the birth parent is your rival in the great genetic steeplechase, a
gene that encourages adoption should be knocked out of the running in fairly
short order. Clearly, it has not been knocked out at all."

While we may not understand all of the processes operative in the animal
world, we can see the answer in man by looking at the biblical perspective.
As the father of three adopted children, one of whom was born with multiple
birth defects, I have been asked on a number of occasions why we adopted children.
It consumed massive amounts of our time and resources and subjected us to
a significant amount of abuse and pain. Friends and family that did not
share our religious convictions thought we were making a mistake.

If you believe in the God of the Bible and are convinced that God created
man uniquely in God's image, that changes everything. My adopted son who
is retarded, blind, has cerebral palsy and a form of muscular dystrophy still
has enormous worth because he is created in God's image. His soul--his spiritual
being--is as valuable as any human on this planet. The struggles we had with
bringing two daughters through their teenage years made sense to us because
they were precious--no matter what they did or how much they might have frustrated
us.

We are not mechanical robots run by a mindless cause-and-affect set of
biological rules. The evidence of man's spiritual makeup as a being with
whom God's "Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God"
(Romans 8:16)
is what causes us to love those with whom we have no biological connection.
Minimizing that belief has caused enormous tragedy; and whether that minimizing
comes from misguided science or misguided religion, it needs to be opposed.